Silent movies - Bare Knees

If I tell you this movie is about a flapper going to live with her sister and her very reputable husband in a very reputable town, you can probably imagine what's going to happen. But can you really?
Today I'll be talking about "Bare Knees" from 1928.

First the plot (spoiler alert!).

We begin in the Longworth household on wife Jane's birthday, but her husband John is home late again - the fate of a County Attorney - while his best friend Paul has already been there for an hour.
Paul has given her perfume, John a stole (you can tell Jane prefers the perfume).

There's also a wire from Jane's sister Billie (Virginia Lee Corbin did a nice job) who turns up at the very respectable birthday party the same evening - a flapper from bob to bare knees.
The effect is amazing, from shocked looks to a few young men being very interested including Larry who works for John.
It's not just her outfit, though, that shocks the good people of Hanford City, it's also her flippant way of talking, her irreverence, and her gift, a diaphanous black negligee.

From then on, Billie's a thorn in her brother-in-law's side. She dances a Charleston at the party and leads the girls' baseball team into a game against the boys' team , all of them wearing short pants and tank tops and confusing the boys so much that they beat them 29 : 0 (funny, the newspaper article says that the girls won against the men). Of course she also smokes, drinks, and is a big flirt.
Jane lets her know she has never seen anything that vulgar, but when Billie has gone out, Jane longingly lifts her own skirt above her knees, not knowing she's seen by John.

Meanwhile, John has sent Larry to investigate the club ship "Ship Ahoy" and Paul tells him that Billie is there almost every night.
John reply is that he wishes she were like Jane because a husband doesn't have to worry about a wife like Jane. Then he goes to bed.
Plot twist!
As soon as John is gone, Jane is in Paul's arms!
While Jane is struggling in her marriage, Billie declines Larry's proposal "Marriage is like eating a mushroom ... you don't know if it's poison until it's too late."

Now things get a little confusing.
John tells Larry they will investigate the "Ship Ahoy" together.
Jane has asked Paul to meet her in one of the private dining rooms on the ship bringing along a travel bag to elope, but Billie has found Jane's note to John and is already there.
When John and Larry turn up, she claims that she's the one who wants to elope with Paul and Jane came to stop her which is of course a shock for Larry.

Are you still with me? Because now it's getting really weird. 
A big fire breaks out on the pier and while all the others make it out in time, Paul and Billie get caught in the fire. Neither of them can swim, though, so of course they decide to have some last fun and ride the rollercoaster which still runs with empty wagons.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on his way to save his love! Who is just crashing through the burning rollercoaster with her wagon. I wish the quality were better. That black "cloud" on the right? That's the wagon.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on ... yes, again, but we don't see how he saves both Billie and Paul. Not that Paul turns up again in the last scenes, so who knows, he might have drowned.

By now, John has found Jane's note, but has the maid burn it (wouldn't that be something you do yourself?). All he says to Jane is that a lot of women wear short skirts now and has she thought of bobbing her hair - and she falls into his arms.
Larry is visiting Billie and she reminds him of his proposal.
Happy ending all around (except for Paul)!

I thought the movie was off to a good start and quite amusing. I even liked the plot twist, who would have thought that of Jane?
The ending, though ...
I don't know that I would have had a great idea myself, but a fire and a rollercoaster? The only excuse I would have for that could be that it's symbolic in some way, but this isn't a deep movie, it's a flapper comedy.

It also was a little disappointing to me that Billie gave up so easily in the end. I guess that was to be expected, maybe she hit her head when they crashed into the water or she saw her life before her eyes and thought she needed to change something. I guess the main point is that I don't think she and Larry make a good couple. He's so boring. Will he be enough for Billie?

I could also really have done without Bessie the maid. No, that's wrong, I could have done with the running "joke" about her hurting feet and her walking around weirdly. My feet hurt all the time and I felt her pain, but it did absolutely nothing for the movie.

The runtime was a little over an hour, easy enough to handle and there were some charming bits (and nice clothes), but "Bare Knees" is not going to make it on my re-watchlist.